3 Strategy Gaps to Avoid in Your 2018 Holiday Marketing

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Chao Liao is a media and advertising executive currently working as the Senior Director of Brand Strategy at Nativo, a native advertising platform. Through his career at AOL, BuzzFeed, YouBeauty, Snaps and now Nativo, Chao has worked with more than 100 major brands in crafting strategic solutions in digital, social, mobile messaging and branded content

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As consumers change their media consumption and buying behaviors, marketers need to update their holiday strategies to close these gaps. Here are the new rules for attracting a bigger share of holiday consumer spend while supporting broader data-centric marketing efforts according to Chao Liao, Senior Director of Brand Strategy, Nativo

When every facet of retail is prone to disruption, one tenet still holds true: Holiday sales represent a make-or-break time of year for retailers. In 2017, holiday retail hit an estimated $692 billion. Today’s retail marketers, who are already knee-deep in 2018 holiday campaign planning, must leverage every weapon in their arsenals to maximize returns for this holiday season.

Overall, holiday retail marketing means high-volume messaging, deep discounting and forceful, last-minute direct-response ads. As consumers change their media and commerce behavior, marketers need to update their holiday strategies to close certain gaps. Native advertising can be employed to help close these gaps and ensure not only robust holiday sales in the short term, but also higher customer lifetime value (LTV) for the long term.

Gap 1: Missing Out on the Research Phase

Historically, holiday media investments have been centered around the biggest buying days of the year, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While those dates generate the highest sales volume, media strategies focused solely on those key dates overlook a crucial fact in consumer purchase behavior: The majority of consumers research and make purchase decisions before the holiday sales events. When they make that purchase on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s often because they decided to make that purchase months ago. Then, they just sat back and waited for the best offer.

If retailers aren’t planning for the holiday shopper research phase, then they’re failing to generate consideration and demand for holiday items when consumers are actually in market. In addition, they risk pouring the majority of their budgets into the most competitive media season—that last-minute pre-holiday crunch time—to reach consumers who have already made up their minds.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70 percent of consumers would rather learn about products through content than traditional advertising. September and October are crucial—and typically more affordable—months for retailers to be pushing out content to help guide consumers during their holiday consideration phase. Native advertising is a great way to get that content in front of the right consumers at the time that they’re drafting up their holiday shopping lists. Based on the engagement generated with this content, retailers can then plan to strategically retarget in-market consumers around important “buy now” dates, achieving higher return for their holiday media investment.

Gap 2: Missing the Online to Offline to Main Street Connections

The percentage of holiday sales that are moving online is no doubt growing, and for that reason, many retailers are obsessively focused on how to spend their digital dollars to drive e-commerce sales. But here’s the problem: Despite the ongoing shift to online, the vast majority of holiday buying is happening in stores. In fact, one out of every five dollars is still being spent at the brick-and-mortar level. According to National Retail Federation data, 89 percent of consumers research online before buying in person.

Retail marketers need to be thinking omnichannel and using their digital spends to influence offline sales locally, as well as e-commerce. Through native articles, marketers can provide rich product information and interactive commerce experiences that enable consumers to browse holiday merchandise. Through the use of dynamic creative optimization, native in-feed ads can further deliver personalized deals and offers. Think of it as the digital version of the tried-and-true in-store circular. Native ads can be used to reflect local deals of interest to the in-store shopper, while also making those ads shoppable for those who like to buy online.

Gap 3: Capturing First-Party Data to Drive LTV

As holiday advertising constitutes a huge portion of a marketer’s annual budget, it presents an equally huge untapped opportunity for retail marketers to build their customer databases and enrich overall DMP data. Native advertising, especially by capturing consumer insights on the content landing page, enables a deeper understanding of new customers based on their content engagement. In fact, research has shown that retargeted media based on native advertising engagement delivers the same ROAS as retargeting media based on a brand site visits. As first-party data becomes even more vital for the long-term health of retail businesses, a data collection strategy—one that helps further drive personalization and long-term LTV—must be a key consideration when putting together a strategic holiday plan.